Pay Your Respects at the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe

On my way to the Reichstag, I had walked past a huge concrete garden filled with various sizes of grey cement blocks. Curiosity overcame me and I walked back to further investigate. I discovered the site was a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The visitor’s center underneath the monument shared the history of the site and told the story of the Holocaust. Construction of this monument started in 2003 and it was opened to the public in 2005. The site, covering 19,073 square meters, houses 2,711 concrete blocks called stelae that vary in height from entirely flat to 4 meters tall and measure .95m wide by 2.38m long. They are assembled in a grid with cobblestone paths running between them. The visitor’s center was divided into the Room of Dimensions, the Room of Families, the Room of Names and the Room of Sites. The Room of Dimensions was a dark room with lit squares in the floor displaying personal accounts of Jewish men and women. Journal entries along with the English translations let visitors enter the minds of the Jewish people and feel their desperation and fear.My eyes filled with tears as I read each entry and imagined the pain of the person who wrote it. The Room of Sites documented the 220 sites across Europe where the genocide of Jews took place. They included sites of mass executions, concentrations camps, ghettos, deportation routes and death marches. The display also showed historical films and pictures that sent chills down my spine. The Room of Families documented the fates of fifteen different Jewish families contrasting their lives before, during and after the Nazi persecution. Photographs and personal reports told how the families were forced from their homes and killed. Entire families were literally wiped out. In the Room of Names, the names of all known victims along with a short biography were read aloud. All four walls were covered with the names, date of birth and year of death of all known victims. It would take approximately six years to read aloud all the names and biographies of the people in this room. After I visited the information center I spent some time walking through the memorial and contemplating what I had just learned. When I first saw the monument I did not understand the concept but now I did. According to Peter Eisenman, the architect who designed it, the stelae were meant to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere representing an ordered system that lost touch with human reason. I think he succeeded.

The lifeless concrete blocks felt impersonal and institutional, like the sea of death and destruction they represented. Two young children scurried through the blocks playing a game of “Hide and Seek”. Their sounds of their laughter added a stark contrast to the bleak surroundings. It was like they represented a future filled with hope. They reminded me about the strength of the human spirit and how it can survive anything. The fact that the Jewish people survived the Holocaust and came forward to tell their story was a testament to that. Although they are still faced with anti-Semitism they continue to heal the wounds of the past and hope for a peaceful future.

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All that remains of Hitler's Bunker is some buried remains covered by this sign.

Visit the Site of Hitler's Bunker

I had read in one of my guidebooks about Hitler’s Bunker, the place where the Führer ultimately took his own life and, when I discovered it was only a few hundred yards from the Jewish memorial, I went to check it out. There wasn’t much to see other than a sign marking the location. The entire building was destroyed and replaced by a park and some apartment housing. When the remains were discovered, it was debated whether or not they should be preserved as a historical site. German authorities decided against it fearing it would become a site of pilgrimage for Neo Nazis. I can see their point, after finally driving the Nazis out of Berlin, the last thing they want to do is give them a reason to return. The best place for Hitler’s Bunker in the history books. The Fuhrerbunker, which is located about 8.2 meters beneath the garden of the old Reich Chancellery building at Wilhelmstraβe 77, was where Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun committed suicide near the end of World War II. The complex was protected by about four meters of concrete and contained about 30 rooms over two levels. Hitler moved in on January 16th1945 and was soon joined by his senior staff, his lover Eva Braun, and Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels along with his wife Magda and their 6 kids.

Many historians believe Joseph Goebbels was responsible for orchestrating the Night of Broken Glass. That night in November of 1938, 92 Jews were murdered, 25,000– 30,000 were sent to concentration camps, and over 200 synagogues were destroyed along with thousands of Jewish homes and businesses. When it became apparent the Nazi’s were about to lose the war, the occupants of the bunker took desperate measures. Hitler finally married his long time companion Eva Braun who he had met when she was only 17 then shot himself 36 hours after the wedding. Eva swallowed cyanide and died shortly after. The bodies of 33 year-old Eva and 56 year-old Hitler were put in a bomb crater, doused with gasoline and set on fire. How romantic, they either honeymooned in heaven or hell, depending on which side of the fence you sit. Hitler’s dog Blondi and Goebbel’s six children were given cyanide tablets before Magda and Joseph committed suicide. A few days later on May 2nd1945, the Soviets captured the bunker and found the bodies of over a dozen people and arrested the few remaining occupants. In subsequent years two attempts were made to blast the bunker into oblivion but pieces still remained which were uncovered by construction crews in the 1980’s and 90’s. The remains were either destroyed or re-sealed.